I smiled at him, mentally thanking fate for our love, for our family, for our life together.
The candles burned with a calm flame, and on the table stood the wine he had chosen for the occasion. Our 30th wedding anniversary was supposed to be special – a memory of the years we spent together.
I smiled at him, mentally thanking fate for our love, for our family, for our life together. But his face was different. He wasn’t smiling. Something in his eyes told me that this evening wouldn’t be what I had imagined.
“We need to talk,” he began, placing his glass of wine on the table. His voice was strangely alien, cold, as if he was speaking to someone he barely knew. “I've wanted to tell you something for a long time, but I haven't had the courage.”
I could feel my heart start to beat faster. Something about the tone of his voice made me uneasy.
„What's going on?– I asked, trying to control the tremor in my voice.
He took a deep breath. „There's someone else,– he said. Those three words hit me like a punch in the gut. „I love her. I've been with her for a year.”
I looked at him, trying to comprehend what I had just heard. Someone else? Year? Love? It all sounded like an absurd joke. „This is some kind of stupid joke, right?– I asked, even though I knew he wasn't joking.
“No, this is not a joke– he said calmly. “I'm sorry, but I can't live a lie anymore. I don't love you anymore.”
Every word he spoke was like another blow. Thirty years. Three decades of shared memories, children, travels, laughter, and tears. Was it all nothing?
„Why today?– I whispered, feeling tears welling up in my eyes. „Why on our anniversary?”
„I wanted to be honest,– he replied, as if honesty could fix what he’d just shattered. „I had to say it. She doesn't want to be hidden anymore.”
“She?!” – I exploded. “So it's all because she doesn't want to be hidden? What about our lives? With our family? With everything we've built?”
He fell silent, and I looked at him, searching his face for any sign of regret, pain, anything that would show he cared a little. But he just sat there, like he’d already made up his mind.
I stood up from the table, unable to stand to be around him. “Everything we had was a lie,” I said, turning away from him. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re not my husband anymore.”
I didn’t sleep that night. I stared at the pictures on the wall—our smiles together, our vacations, our moments of happiness. Everything now seemed like some kind of illusion, a fiction we had created to hide the truth.
In the morning, when I woke up, I knew one thing. Our thirty years might have been real to me, but not to him. I couldn't change that. But I could decide what I would do with the next few years of my life.
„Get out,– I told him without hesitation when he came into the kitchen. „If you chose someone else, then go to her. But don't expect me to watch you destroy everything that was important to me.”
He left that same day. And I? I started building my life anew, even though my heart was still bleeding. Because sometimes the greatest drama is having to get up when someone has destroyed your world.
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